Obama to Unveil an Ambitious Budget Plan

The Washington Post ^ | February 21, 2009 | Lori Montgomery and Ceci Connolly

[Baladas]

President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on business and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.

In addition to tackling a deficit swollen by the $787 billion stimulus package and other efforts to ease the nation's economic crisis, the budget blueprint will press aggressively for progress on the domestic agenda Obama outlined during the presidential campaign. This would include key changes to environmental policies and a major expansion of health coverage that Obama hopes to enact later this year.

A summary of Obama's budget request for the fiscal year that begins in October will be delivered to Congress on Thursday, with the complete, multi-hundred-page document to follow in April. But Obama plans to unveil his goals for scaling back record deficits and rebuilding the nation's costly and inefficient health care system Monday, when he addresses more than 100 lawmakers and budget experts at a White House summit on restoring "fiscal responsibility" to Washington

[patton]

Oh? We are still on a continueing resolution, are we not?

[calex59]

He has already done worse. Are you frickin’ blind. Yep, Bush spent to much, but he didn’t deliberately try to kill the country, Bozo is trying to do just that. As for Regan he got us out a terrible recession caused by the same crap Bozo is doing right now. Go back to DU or where ever you came from.

[Kaslin]

The only one that is transparent is the 0. One has to be either blind or ignorant not to see the liar that he is

[calex59]

Get lost a**hat. You are a troll, pure and simple with only BS to spout on your post.

[villagerjoel]

Poor old Washington has no choice but to stand there and take it.

[Jim Robinson]

Yeah, King Hussein Obamassaiah’s gonna save us by massive government spending and tax increases!

[Rome2000]

Time for Republicans to show us what they’re worth. This is the big one

They have already shown us that they are worth NOTHING, and have been since Reagan left.

Don't expect any help from GOP DC politicians, all they care about is getting reelected.

[utahson]

"I don’t know if O will do better, but I doubt he will do worse even if he is secretly trying."

Troll alert. Okay rat. Let me tell you, Zero is on his way in just one month to destroy this country. He has already done more damage in one month than Reagan and GW combined. I will be kind to you, you are an idiot.

[Gone_Postal]

[Canedawg]

It is all black magic.
*********************

Can we still say that?

*LOL*

[caseinpoint]

Because Dem politicians and their voter base of welfare cases don’t pay taxes and don’t understand how it might affect the economy.

[FocusNexus]

Why aren’t you giving Republicans credit for standing up in unity against the Obama Porkulus bill? No House R voted for it and all but the 3 traitors in the Senate voted against it as well.

This was remarkable.

[beejaa]

What a lot of conservatives want (and I am a former liberal FWIW) is limited government. We like Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith. We have not been getting this from any of our leaders. A lot of conservatives are unhappy with how Bush handled the economy.

Our economic difficulties were not produced by one single cause. Republicans, Democrats and greedy bankers alike all share some of the blame. Jimmy Carter passed the Community Reinvestment Act that initially set the stage for the risky loans. The Clinton administration vamped up the CRA as you can see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64 . The link shows Andrew Cuomo proudly announcing in 1998 that the Clinton administration was going to force the banks to begin issuing risky loans in order to combat racism in lending.

The Bush administration did not handle interest rates wisely. In addition, people in India and China had lots of money to invest, and US housing seemed like an excellent investment option, so money flowed.

I’m sure that many a graduate thesis will be written on the economic crisis, but I am troubled that Democrats apparently refuse to shoulder any of the blame. Our understanding of the underlying causes of this crisis makes all the difference in how we choose to address it.

Perfection in government and society is not possible. Liberals make the mistake of thinking that they can solve things like poverty if only they could implement plan A or plan B. Poverty has always been with us and I think it always will be. I am not indifferent to the suffering of poor people, but I have become more realistic about what intervention and social engineering can do.

Governments consist of people and people make mistakes. It is a wiser course of action to allow millions of people to make decisions about their own lives rather than allow central planning in Washington to “solve” all our problems.

Socialism has always produced stagnant economies because the government ends up sucking up vast amounts of money from the private sphere. Socialism provides no incentive. If you work, you’re taxed. If you don’t work, you’re rewarded with government benefits.

I only hope our foray into socialism will be brief.

[Evil Slayer]

Until we can gain back both houses in congress (hopefully in two years), we have to pray there are enough dems that will see through this fake president. We have to stall everything he tries to push across his desk until he is either voted out of office, impeached or exposed of not being a natural born citizen of this country.

[OldNavyVet]

As I said in post 18 ... “Liberals don’t make money, they take it without working for it. Liberals are looters.”

The “Big money guys” you mention in post 33 are middlemen, not producers. Their work is not productive labor, but more like that of middlemen or bankers — subject to some risk without any productive labor.

[Chgogal]

“Obama also proposes to maintain the tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million, instead of letting it expire next year. And he proposes “a fairly aggressive effort on tax enforcement” that would target tax havens and corporate loopholes, among other provisions, the official said.”

Dearest Leader,

Would you please demand the tax penalties owed to this country by Gietner and Daschel? Thank you.

Chgogal

[SteamShovel]

ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years

This can't be done if he is going to spend, spend, spend for "stimulus", and kill the economy's money makers with taxes.

The government expenses and tax revenue will diverge.

[444Flyer]

We're All California Now

[Carling]

crAP:

Obama turns to budget, health care, entitlements

By JIM KUHNHENN and CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – After focusing his first month on the economic mess he inherited HELPED CREATE,...

[PhiKapMom]

Thanks for outing yourself on ZERO. We knew we had trolls that were here from DU and other places since they would vote for ZERO in the polls. No conservative I know would make a comment like yours. Raise taxes on wealthy and business people — yeah right. Who does he think pays most of the taxes now and what is his definition of wealthy. Why should anyone want to make more money if the ZERO Government is going to take more away.